Clean Installation of Vista - fail

Hi,

I've got a Lamborghini VX2S computer
http://gadgets.softpedia.com/gadgets/Portable-computing-systems/Asus-Lamborghini-VX2S-Notebook-7716.html


More bells and whistles really - you're paying a lot for leather bag accessories etc.. I had a friend who convinced me it was the best in the world.

Turns out it rans slow. It took a good 5 minutes to start up. And shutting down was also slow.

I generally ignored the problems as I only used it when I was traveling.

My main machine runs XP PRO and its sweet as.

Lately, the problems got to me and I started deleting the Asus bloatware like Splendid, the useless finger reader (my fingers never work on virtually all biometric stuff), the ASUS security protection stuff etc..

And it actually helped - it ran faster.

One day my friend who a computer guru with a string of IT degrees advised me to do a clean fresh installation of the machine (not recovery data). I thot it was a good idea.

So we formated C drive - got rid of the recovery partition (the disk is in my overseas office) and did a nice clean fresh installation of Vista Ultimate.

All is good - but 3/4 of the way thru the installation, the computer hangs.

After trying for a good 5 hours its still no go.

help please.

Cheers.


I suspect the problem is Vista and the Sata HD.



Rant.....
Memo to self - don't do a clean installation of Vista without doing more research on it
I hate Vista so much
did Microsoft come up with such a crap software, I mean its got billions of dollars... couldn't it come up with some reliable like XP ???

 

I am trying to think why this would happen....

1. Vista CD is scratched?
2. Faulty Hardware?
3. Incompatible Hardware?

I think #3 is less likely but maybe I am wrong. I have done my share of fresh installs and seen some weird things but they were more often than not some fault with the hard drive.

Maybe try going into the repair option of the Vista install and running chkdsk. I do not know if this is true but once I had problems installing XP on a machine and it came back with bad sectors so I chalked it up to the install was trying to write data on the bad sectors of the HDD.

 

I think other people had problems installing a fresh clean installation of Vista onto a SATA Drive. I may be wrong in this. But that's the limits of my research.

I reloaded the disk - and come to the blackscreen with the Microsoft Vista marque and the dotting diodes which are going in an endless loop.

I can't find the option for repair disk....

 

make sure nothing is plugged into a usb or card reader slot etc..., I almost rma'd my asus x59sr-a1 because my started to hang on shutdown and start up, so I decided to do a clean install, it kept hanging, failing installation, and doing things similar to what your describing. ended up being a micro sd adapter with no card in it in the card reader, I removed the card but not the adapter a few days earlier. I was pissed when I figured it out

*edit* vista 32bit, sata HDD

 

Nope nothing in card reader.

Does Vista have problem installing on freshly formated SATA drives?

 

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

That is the Vista repair tutorial.

Edit: Advanced Tools overview is the section to check on that link.

Edit #2: So try going into command prompt and running a chkdsk to see if the drive is fine.

Honestly if Vista can see the Sata drive I am not sure what the problem is. Back in the day (4 years ago?) when Sata drives started becoming more popular XP no SP had issues with SATAs but I can't say I have had that problem with working sata drives.

 

My laptop hangs on startup when my eSata drive is plugged in, without it plugged it starts in about 1:00.

 

vista now is more reliable than xp and is very good. it just had a lot of problems in the beginning, giving it a bad name. people complain about speed, but look at xp. tinyxp makes xp look like total crap. its got TONS of things running no one needs.

i'd first try a different disk since thats the easiest thing to test.

 

Some good news. I got laid and I managed to install XP Pro onto the Lamborghini. It runs and works even without the graphic drivers. Can't seem to access the internet. But I can access my D drive, play the videos, and see the photos. So the problem doesn't seem to be with the computer but with the VISTA installation disk.

I had to disable the SATA Drive from Enhanced to compatible in the bios to enable the installation tho. But it works.

I'm toying now with the idea of running XP Pro on the machine. But it a hassle to get the wireless driver/ bluetooth/ graphic card drivers etc..

Might go back to Vista...

 

Some good news. I loaded Vista back onto the machine using the Asus recovery disk provided. I didn't realize you could still use it even after the hidden partition was deleted.

Better news- loading up the Vista without the Asus drivers meant that I could pick and choose which drivers to install first. (Always install the INTEL CHIPSET DRIVER FIRST).

And whatdaya know? A lot of the problems I had before in the past - curious crap like Firefox / IE Explorer crunched screen problems where the text was squashed into each other - was gone. That was a bizarre problem as I assumed it was either a FireFox/ IE / or graphic card problem. Turns out it was a VISTA error that was fixed by a fresh clean installation.